Car-Pool Paperwork Cut for Bigger Firms : Smog laws: Following complaints from businesses, supervisors let companies with 100 or more workers police their own programs.
Ventura County’s larger employers won a reprieve Tuesday from the amount of paperwork they must file with county officials to prove they are complying with anti-smog laws to get more commuters to share rides to work.
The changes adopted unanimously by supervisors basically allow companies with 100 or more workers to police their own programs to encourage at least one of every four employees to walk, ride a bike or join a car-pool to work.
The Board of Supervisors also agreed to consider exempting medium-sized companies, defined as those with 50 to 99 workers, from the car-pooling rule or allow the firms alternative ways to help reduce smog. The board is scheduled to review staff recommendations on the matter next month.
The supervisors’ 5-0 vote to reduce paperwork in the anti-smog rules came after two hours of complaints from business leaders on the burden of rules that required extensive plans on how each company would reduce the number of workers who drive alone to work each morning.
Specifically, the revisions give companies an option each year of submitting a streamlined performance plan explaining their ride-sharing goals. No longer will each company be forced to redo its entire “trip reduction plan,” an extensive and often voluminous report required to meet certification by the county’s Air Pollution Control District.
But if the company goes with the streamlined report and fails to meet required reductions in cars arriving at work, it could be vulnerable to penalties of up to $200 per employee.
Companies that stick with the comprehensive trip reduction plans that spell out car-pooling incentives in more detail will not face fines for failing to meet all of the requirements.
This year, large and medium-sized employers must have at least 1.25 workers for each car that arrives at work in the morning, or five employees for every four cars. By 1997, the state will raise the standards to 1.5 ridership, or three people for every two cars.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Supervisor John K. Flynn proposed to do away with financial penalties altogether and “depend on people’s good faith to execute these rules.”
“It would show businesses that we are friendly to business, and that would be a comfort to those business people,” he said.
But Flynn’s idea mustered little support among his colleagues.
Under the revision, businesses also would have the option of combining their efforts with other companies to meet an overall goal of 1.5 workers per car.
The changes approved Tuesday go into effect June 30.
Some business leaders have complained bitterly over the past two years that costly and cumbersome government regulations are burdensome and hurting business.
“The state and federal government are doing a fine job of over-regulating business without city and county government’s help,” said Roland Holliday, operations manager for OTS Trucking of Ventura.
“The businesses need the county and city to fight for us at the state and federal level,” he said. “If it keeps going this might be our final year, our 46th year.”
Despite reductions in smog in Ventura County, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency still classifies the county as “severe” in failing to meet health standards for ozone on certain days of the year. Ozone is a main component of smog.
Richard Baldwin, the county’s air pollution control officer, said forcing companies to implement car-pools has helped further the trend of fewer bad smog days. Last year, for example, the county exceeded federal standards for ozone on only 10 days, contrasted with 122 such days in 1974.
“I’ve often said that the automobile is California’s sacred cow and nobody wants it regulated,” Baldwin said. But he suggested that the streamlined paperwork makes such regulations more palatable to private companies.
Not everyone, however, agreed with the approved changes.
One business executive complained that the fines imposed for noncompliance would serve as a “disincentive,” while another said the fines would be cheaper than implementing a car-pooling program.
The performance plan “is the only option in the rule that offers the employers any real relief from the time-consuming, burdensome and costly process of preparing a plan,” said Charles Coffey, executive director of the Simi Valley Transportation Management Assn., which represents 15 firms employing 7,000 workers.
“Yet (it) threatens excessive fines if an employer chooses to exercise the option,” he said.
Christine Bogdan of Pleasant Hawaiian Holidays said a typical fine would be about $13,000--five times cheaper than what her company spent implementing its plan to reduce solo driving to work. She also worried that allowing companies to average their increased ridership per car would undermine the intent of the ordinance.
But the supervisors disagreed.
“There’s all kinds of potential there for people to help each other,” Supervisor Susan K. Lacey said of the averaging plan. “We can even strengthen the community if we approach it the way we approached it today.”
Although it was not up for consideration Tuesday, some of the strongest objections came from representatives of medium-sized businesses, who contended they are too small to make much difference on smog levels.
“We’re concerned about the escalating cost of a program that will never reach compliance,” said Kenneth M. High of the Oxnard law firm Nordman, Cormany, Hair & Compton, which he said employs 76 people and spent $22,000 to meet the county requirements.
“The mandatory plans are too costly for small businesses to absorb,” he said.
Smaller businesses will have to wait, however, until May 4, when the board will consider a proposal by Flynn to exempt all companies employing fewer than 100 people from the anti-smog rule.
Supervisors next month also will consider establishing a “buy back” fund in which small companies can contribute to remove the heaviest-polluting cars from the road.
